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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24121807">Lodestar</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thricetomine/pseuds/thricetomine'>thricetomine</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bathing/Washing, Flower-Picking, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, solicitousness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 15:35:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,948</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24121807</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thricetomine/pseuds/thricetomine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Geralt finds it advantageous to be in the company of a bard. The advantage Jaskier enjoys is, perhaps, more subtle.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>161</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Lodestar</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The witcher and he cross paths from time to time, sometimes weeks, sometimes months or more apart; sometimes Jaskier pursues an overheard rumour; sometimes the rumour storms moodily into a tavern where, by coincidence, he was holed up already. And sometimes it is not a rumour pursued, but a great smear of blood stumbled across on a stretch of ice in the road in the night, and a disturbance of underbrush where the smear trails off, like some animal had been hauled away, or had hauled itself away to exsanguinate in privacy.</p><p>"Geralt," calls Jaskier into the shadows, one such evening. "I don't suppose that's you?"</p><p>"Who else would it be," comes Geralt's voice in answer.</p><p>"There's a town," says Jaskier. "With an inn, just a little way up the road, if you're indisposed."</p><p>"I know about the town," says Geralt. "Came from there."</p><p>"Ah," says Jaskier. "I was going to rent a room and spend some time writing, like a residency, because the seaside in winter is—the majesty of nature, you know how it inspires the spirit."</p><p>A rustle in the brush like the hauled-away animal is about to emerge, and then Geralt does, hair thick with brambles, gambeson torn. A different gambeson than Jaskier had seen before, though a well-worn one. Perhaps it had been some time since last they met on the road outside a town.</p><p>"When it's not trying to kill you," says Geralt.</p><p>"When what isn't," says Jaskier.</p><p>"Nature," says Geralt.</p><p>"Where's Roach," says Jaskier.</p><p>"At the inn, in town," says Geralt, and sets off up the road without another word. Jaskier scrambles after, giving the ice and the blood smear a wide berth, and venturing a nervous look back over his shoulder at the brush, still and silent.</p><p>Geralt's eyes gleam gold in the firelight of the tavern, where the innkeeper unsmilingly hands him a coin-purse and gestured to the hall at the back, at the end of which is a half-flight of stairs leading down and a heavy oak door opening onto a musty-smelling room given halfway over to storage. But there's a crude bed with a straw mattress and coarse linens folded at its foot, an iron tub half-filled with steaming water, a basin, a porcelain jug set atop a battered cabinet, a stove.</p><p>"Cozy," says Jaskier, contemplating the cabinet. "It was thoughtful of you to get us a room, Geralt, you know how hard it is to pay for an artist's retreat in a town like this. You're the most generous patron I've ever had, I'm going to write a song in your honour. Or a whole cycle of them."</p><p>The tenor of Geralt's silence had shifted since the moment the door closed behind them, and Jaskier turns to see: the witcher was gingerly pulling off his muddy boots, his feet blistered, and his breeches, slashed to ribbons, are adhered to the wounds underneath with dried blood. The expression on his face would read impassive to anyone else, but to Jaskier, it discloses a wince.</p><p>He takes stock. In the cabinet is a brick of tallow soap and in an overcoat pocket was an egg he'd absconded from a henhouse a few miles further up the road from the town than the blood smear and the underbrush disturbance, after seeing a fox to whom the theft would surely be attributed; in another pocket, a little juniper bough, snipped off a shrub for good luck or for sweeping away his footprints in the snow; in the welt pocket of his waistcoat, a flask; and on a barrel in the corner of the room, a tankard.</p><p>The white of the egg, beaten gingerly with the juniper bough into the soap, melted over the stove, in the basin. The yolk, broken in a loose fist and dropped into the tankard, whiskey from the flask poured over, swirled with a practiced hand. </p><p>The suggestion of a wince blossoms into a grimace as Geralt lowers himself into the bath, inch by battered inch. </p><p>"This'll help," says Jaskier. "With the, ah, the slime." The juniper bough is a more suitable whisk in the heat of the water, but the growing foam from the soap and the white is, nevertheless, dotted with needles, visible even over the mud. Geralt closes his eyes.</p><p>"One more thing," Jaskier says, and takes Geralt's filthy hand from the edge of the tub where it was laid, pressing the tankard into it. "A tonic, for the nerves."</p><p>"My nerves are fine," says Geralt, and downs it in a single gulp in any event, then scowls. "Was that—"</p><p>"Whiskey, and an egg yolk, for strength," says Jaskier.</p><p>"I have my own potions," says Geralt.</p><p>"Let me bask in the thrill of preparedness, for once, if you don't mind," says Jaskier.</p><p>The grimace, already settled back into the shadow of a wince, twists into a fraction of a smile.</p><p>"Roach will be disappointed," says Geralt. "That you didn't share with her. Eggs are good for her coat, they keep her glossy."</p><p>"I'll steal another one for her on the way past again," says Jaskier. "Or you can buy her an egg, if you're flush with cash from whatever this was."</p><p>"She'd appreciate it more from you," says Geralt.</p><p>There is time, often, to kiss the mouth of his oldest friend instead of scrutinizing its shape for things unsaid; but there has always been so little time for care. It is no trial, therefore, for Jaskier to nestle in the curve of Geralt’s spine with his feet tucked between the witcher’s calves and his face buried in the lank white hair, still tangled and mud-spattered and now knotted with juniper needles, and to fall asleep there, the smell notwithstanding, under the threadbare wool coverlet in the glorified root cellar; and no trial, even, to be unceremoniously thrown out the following morning at dawn, Geralt having only paid for one night's accommodation.</p><p>❧</p><p>On another occasion Jaskier meets the witcher in a city square where he'd been performing at the behest of a minor local lord, until Geralt plods unexpectedly into view; though, as the length of their acquaintance wears on, it seems hardly unexpected to encounter him again after a long absence, no matter the circumstances.</p><p>Jaskier cuts his own performance short, disappointing no onlookers, and hurriedly packs his lute. Geralt heaves himself onto a stone stair to wait.</p><p>"I've got a room we can use, to hose you off," he tells the witcher. "You're covered in—oh, that's your own blood this time."</p><p>"It is," says Geralt. "I'm fine."</p><p>He is, to Jaskier's mild shock, though not unscathed, of which new scathes Jaskier takes an inventory from a stool on the floor next to the cast iron tub in the room he'd rented by the week. He'd pleaded with the landlady to fill at an unscheduled time, and she had acquiesced only after seeing the bloody mess of Geralt's face, and still with some reluctance.</p><p>"How do you manage it," Jaskier says, marvelling over the skin under his fingertips. The ugly slash that starts above Geralt's left eye and zigzags past his hairline is already covered over with fresh scar tissue, only a little raised, pink with newness. It had been three hours, maybe four, since he'd staggered through the city gates, ghastly pale.</p><p>"Potion," grunts Geralt.</p><p>"No, I know, but how does it—"</p><p>"Just does," says Geralt.</p><p>The blood that had clotted in his hair, however, had not lifted by magic.</p><p>"Room for improvement in your potions," says Jaskier. "Leaves a little to be desired, looks-wise."</p><p>"You should write a ballad about it," says Geralt. "Or register a formal complaint."</p><p>"I will," says Jaskier, but he leans forward to take Geralt’s head in his hands anyhow.  With his own pearwood comb an old lover had given him once, he works the blood and knots out inch by inch, massaging the healing scalp with his fingertips once the knots had been smoothed to the crown of Geralt's head. The witcher's eyes are closed, lips slightly parted.</p><p>Jaskier brushes the scar again, healed near completely now, with fingers first, then with his lips.</p><p>"Taking liberties, I see," murmurs Geralt.</p><p>"Thought you were asleep, or if you weren't, you wouldn't mind," says Jaskier.</p><p>"Take more liberties if you'd like," says Geralt, and brings Jaskier's right hand to his own lips. The left, he cups around the witcher's shoulder, then slides down his chest.</p><p>The water has cooled to lukewarm but the witcher's skin and breath are hot under his hands, and his heartbeat is palpable the way it only is when he's grievously injured or terribly aroused. Slower than Jaskier's, still, even at rest, and steady, and Jaskier orients his breaths around it, and Geralt's breaths follow.</p><p>He's hard already, by the time Jaskier's left hand has reached his hip, and his cock brushes Jaskier's wrist, nearly the same circumference. He can scarcely close his hand around it but when he does, Geralt's pulse has quickened to match his own, and he can feel them together in the tip of his thumb.</p><p>Geralt's orgasm is brusque and efficient, not a breath wasted, perfect economy of motion. But he whimpers into Jaskier's palm when his hips jerk forward involuntarily, and his face is flushed for a few moments afterward, the way it's never flushed at the height of combat or exertion on a long trek overland, and he kisses Jaskier's palm again, and his fingertips, rather breathless, before Jaskier leaves him alone to dry off in front of the stove.</p><p>They lie together in companionable silence after night has fallen, side by side. The sparse hair on Geralt's abdomen is dark, and the hair on his thighs, but the thatch of hair where they meet is the same shock of grey as the hair on his head, and his cock is nestled there, like a—</p><p>"Like a what," murmurs Geralt, and Jaskier curses to realize he'd been thinking aloud.</p><p>"Like a—don't, Geralt, don't make me finish that thought."</p><p>A baby bird, is what it's like, secure in the nest but impossibly fragile, skin so translucently thin that the pulse is visible through it. As pink as the fresh scar above Geralt's eye, looking up at Jaskier, inquisitive.</p><p>"If it isn't what it is, then what is it," says Geralt.</p><p>"You'll never convince me of the merits of shutting up from time to time, and I'll never convince you of the merits of a simile, so can we leave it,” says Jaskier. The stubborn pleasure of a stalemate being the only point of agreement he could ever be certain of.</p><p>❧</p><p>It is a great advantage of their arrangement that, when Jaskier trails the witcher on an errand, there are coincidental errands of his own to be struck off his private list concurrently: not only music to be composed, debuted, and critiqued, but distinctive local fashions to be admired or copied, gossip on which to eavesdrop, and, occasionally, aromatics to be plucked from embankments a discreet distance away from where Geralt was engaged with his latest contract. Jaskier believes it most tactful to linger just out of earshot.</p><p>A particular late summer errand is premised around a discussion with a half-man or half-wolf involved in a property dispute with a consortium of shepherds, or more properly a dispute over the appropriateness of lambs to be eaten, and the nearest embankment is overgrown with lavender and hyssop just past their peak. </p><p>By the time Geralt trudges back after an hour, doublet shredded, breeches soaked in mud past the knees, a gangly moorit lamb draped over his shoulder and around the back of his neck like a foxfur stole, Jaskier's pockets are full to bursting with the least wilted of the herbs.</p><p>"You reek," says Geralt in greeting.</p><p>"Thank you, my dashing compatriot," says Jaskier. "You're going to start a new trend of lambs on shoulders in the city, if you aren't careful."</p><p>"I'm giving it back," says Geralt. The lamb cranes its neck to nibble companionably at his ear.</p><p>The lamb is returned to its shepherd and the coin exchanges hands while Jaskier loiters, again, outside of earshot, around the corner of a cobbled lane outside the shepherd's line of sight.</p><p>"For your loner image," he'd explained to Geralt on the way. "It's part of your brand, you have an identity to maintain, you know."</p><p>The trudge has taken on the character of a limp by the time they arrive at the inn in the town, where the lamb's ransom pays for a meagre dinner and a room for the night, a room with a bath drawn.</p><p>"You smell like lamb piss," says Jaskier. "Wash your clothes at least."</p><p>The doublet is shredded. Beneath it and the similarly shredded shirt are the clawmarks of, presumably, the wolf-man that did the shredding, swollen around their edges.</p><p>"Or wash the lamb piss out of your scratches," adds Jaskier. Geralt mumbles some kind of assent and sinks into the bath, which is cloudy with an unidentifiable murk, although, mercifully, still steaming. From the pocket of herbs Jaskier draws out a handful and muddles them in a fist and casts them in after the witcher, who yelps and nearly leaps out again when the astringents hit the scratches. </p><p>"Fuck," he says. "That stings."</p><p>"Not on purpose, it's all there was nearby," says Jaskier. "Blame your shepherds for where they left their lambs, not your bard."</p><p>But he does make a mental note, later on, when Geralt is already snoring but the residual astringent smell lodges itself in his sinuses, and it's all he can do not to sneeze, without drawing back from where his forehead is pressed between the witcher's shoulder blades: perhaps, in the future, no lavender.</p><p>❧</p><p>The principle of lingering back out of earshot and discreetly around a bend in the road if possible had sprung fully-formed into Jaskier's mental schematic of his work with the witcher on a snowy late spring afternoon when they unexpectedly stumbled across the subject of an errand. At the time, it was an adequately reasoned decision to flee into the dense woods on foot, although Jaskier finds his own reasoning lacking in retrospect as the afternoon wears into evening, the snow continued to fall, and neither the witcher nor the road are anywhere to be found.</p><p>Geralt locates him eventually, half-dug into a snowbank an hour after dusk, by the light of the moon, contemplating how he could compose a funeral dirge and have it discovered to be performed at his own funeral. The witcher, not ungently, dusts him off and hauls him onto the saddle in front of himself.</p><p>"Would've made it back to the road eventually," Jaskier mumbles, slumped over the pommel, into Roach's mane.</p><p>"Of course you would," says Geralt, and gives the mare free rein.</p><p>Through eyes half-closed and lashes frozen together, it appears to Jaskier that Roach has found and is following a deer path through the underbrush, further and further afield from where he imagines the road to be. He dozes, likely, for a time, and comes to abruptly when Roach halts, in a clearing.</p><p>"We're here," says Geralt.</p><p>"Where's that," says Jaskier, swinging a leg high and forward over Roach's bowed neck to alight on solid ground. </p><p>"Cabin, looks like," says Geralt, sliding off the mare himself.</p><p>"I'm going to rub you down," says Jaskier to Roach. "You did me a favour, there, and I owe you one, and I don't like owing one to anyone for long, if I can help it."</p><p>He has only the wadded up length of his own cloak still fastened to his neck to do it with, but the mare is steaming in the cold, so there's no recourse; from fore to aft he rubs with vigour, her winter coat and her sweat and the dust from the road and the brush coming away in great swipes. The cloak would be unwearable by the time they made it back to civilization. </p><p>"You could've killed us," says Jaskier, this time to the witcher, still briskly rubbing. "By not killing it. It followed us, Geralt. Where are we? Do you even know where we are. I don't think that you do."</p><p>"Didn't do anything to deserve killing," says Geralt.</p><p>"A man of principle," says Jaskier. Geralt doesn't answer, and Jaskier presses: "How's that one going to play in your legacy of monster-slaying. Geralt of Rivia, the great conflict de-escalator, all that power and for what. An anticlimax."</p><p>He doesn't answer still, and Jaskier turns on his heel to face him, only to find him swaying on his feet, eyes closed and skin sallow and waxy, brow beaded with sweat, breathing quick and laboured.</p><p>"You should have said something, you absolute, calamitous fool," says Jaskier.</p><p>The cordwood hunter's shack Roach had brought them to is bolted shut for the winter, but the bar on the door is pried off easily enough. Inside, a pile of straw. An empty open shelf. A shallow cast-iron tub, a cracked clay jug, a hearth, a basket of tinder, a stack of split logs that issued acrid smoke when Jaskier set a pair of them alight.</p><p>Geralt had managed to shed his own cloak and boots and gambeson and haul himself into the tub where he appeared even more deathly pale, shivering more violently than Jaskier had ever seen. The fresh wounds on his forearms looked raw and are seeping pus, and the angry red swelling around them is climbing toward the elbows, quick enough to see.</p><p>"We'll sweat it out, don't worry," says Jaskier. The witcher is silent and motionless save for the shivering, and he shivers too on the way out the door, over and over, hauling back in snow by the jugful to melt and heat to just past tepid in front of the now-roaring fire, pouring it over the barely conscious witcher, then back outside for more, until, what seems like hours later, the shivering has started to slow, the swelling recede, and circulation return to the pale hands and feet.</p><p>Roach, unconcerned with human travails, blessedly patient, is still standing at her ease in the clearing outside, dappled with freshly fallen snow.</p><p>"You'll catch your death out there," says Jaskier, and leads her in, and ground-ties her in the corner opposite the hearth.</p><p>Geralt's cloak is soaked from the snow and Jaskier's is only filthy with crusted mud and horsehair, so he uses it to rub down the witcher, too, and helps him to the strawpile for a bed, and draws it over them both there, and presses himself against the witcher's back, whose shivering is now somewhat quelled but not altogether abated. He dozes off, somehow, eventually, Geralt's fist clenched around his hand.</p><p>The fever must have broken first, and then the dawn. It's scarcely twilight when Geralt rouses him.</p><p>"You brought Roach inside," mumbles the witcher, startling Jaskier from his uneasy sleep. Their hands are still entwined.</p><p>"You could thank me," says Jaskier. "For looking after you and her."</p><p>"Why would I thank you, she's spoiled now," says Geralt.</p><p>"What was that," says Jaskier. "Was it—was it poisonous, that enormous spider, or whatever it was. Were you fatally poisoned, until I rescued you."</p><p>"A potion," says Geralt. "There's one that expunges poison, so I sweat it out overnight, and it's over."</p><p>"I thought you were dying," says Jaskier, indignant.</p><p>"You wished," says Geralt. Roach huffs her agreement from across the shack's single room.</p><p>"I'm never letting you inside again, if you're just going to take his side," says Jaskier.</p><p>Nevertheless, he does pass a few minutes that morning while Geralt makes breakfast—groats for Roach; the same but boiled and salted for himself and for Jaskier—braiding a few fistfuls of straw from the floor into a thick cord, and lashing it into a round with the bodkin and coarse linen thread he’s in the habit of carrying in case of wardrobe emergencies, to rub her down more vigorously than could be done with the soft twill of his cloak, next time they were caught in the cold.</p><p>❧</p><p>"You smell like a barn," says Jaskier to the witcher, long ago, after an overnight spent in a pasture perhaps too near to its resident cattle, who had been huddled around the manure pile for warmth in the chill spring night.</p><p>“Geralt,” he adds. “Do you know what day it is. How long has it been since we were last within hailing distance of a fireplace."</p><p>"Can't say," says Geralt.</p><p>"I think," says Jaskier, "I used to have better recollection of dates and times. Poet's memory for specifics, it's unmatched."</p><p>"Fascinating," says Geralt.</p><p>"What I mean is this," says Jaskier. "How long have we—worked together. How long have I been your—your promoter."</p><p>"Can't answer that," says Geralt. "Time just passes, for us—for me. It all blurs together."</p><p>"You won't get old, then," says Jaskier.</p><p>"Might get slow," says Geralt. "And I'll die if something kills me, if that's what you’re asking. But from age, no."</p><p>"How long have you had Roach," says Jaskier.</p><p>"No way to tell," says Geralt. "She's as sound as the day we met. Probably old as the hills."</p><p>"But she's not a—"</p><p>"Just a mare. A good one, though."</p><p>There's a river through a little stand of aspens on the western edge of the pasture, and Jaskier gingerly picks his way through the underbrush toward the sound of rushing water, trailed by the witcher a few steps back.</p><p>"Geralt," says Jaskier. "I—I don't want to die, if you won't. I don't want you to have to be—alone. Unpromoted."</p><p>"Then don't," says Geralt. "Don't get slow, and stick close enough, and you'll be fine, you and Roach."</p><p>They break through the brush to the top of the riverbank. It's wide and shallow and in the sunlight is the brilliant teal of refracted glacial silt, and it's likely to be bitterly cold; but Jaskier shucks his cloak and jacket and shirt, tugs off his boots one by one, shimmies out of the breeches, which reek of livestock, sure enough.</p><p>"How close is close," says Jaskier.</p><p>"Not every hour of the day," says Geralt. "But skin to skin, I think."</p><p>"You'd—you'd let me, then," says Jaskier."</p><p>"Having a bard is not without its advantages," says Geralt. "It'd be a shame to do without them."</p><p>"I'm going to write a song about <em> that</em>," says Jaskier, and leaps into the river, just out of Geralt's arm's reach.</p><p>"If you drown, I can't save you," calls the witcher after him. "And no one will remember you who can write songs in your honour."</p><p>The river is as cold as the glacial silt suggested, but in the full sunlight it's bracing, not bitter, and Jaskier knows, then, that a life of moments in sequence unmoored from the passage of time's death-knell merits consideration, not least because, if he does get slow, there's a lockbox in the library at Oxenfurt where his own papers are stored, and he can certainly send his own material for safekeeping there, whether the witcher will mourn him or not.</p><p>"You're the one who smelled like shit," says Jaskier. "Take care of it, would you."</p><p>And Geralt joins him in the river, back inside his arm's reach, and they lie in the sun to dry off afterward shoulder to shoulder, and when they return to the road, Roach has no objection to Jaskier's being close enough to reach out to touch the witcher's thigh, if he wished to, though he doesn't; and they pass the afternoon and evening that way, and the next, and the next.</p>
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